REVISION 4-20-99
SVCC POLICY ON CYBER COURSES

1. RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION
1.1. COLLEGE RESPONSIBILITIES TO STUDENTS
1.1.1. Assessment of Student Skills
1.1.1.1. All students who intend to enroll in cyber courses at SVCC should have their work habits, study skills, and computer knowledge assessed in order to help them decide on their readiness to take cyber courses. The assessment instrument should be available both on-line and in paper and pencil form.
1.1.2. Advisement, Counseling, and Orientation
1.1.2.1. Student orientation to the computer labs, the network logon procedures, the basic features of Windows and Netscape, and the creation of email accounts are of the highest priority.
1.1.2.2. Therefore, college will provide for instruction on these topics by all appropriate means including lab sessions on Freshmen Orientation Days, through Orientation classes (STD 100), through short courses and workshops, library classes, and in academic courses requiring computer use.
1.1.2.3. Faculty and/or student services personnel, tutors, and staff are responsible for conducting these orientation sessions.
1.1.2.4. Student Services personnel will inform students interested in taking Cyber courses what is required of them as outlined in the Informational Handout and give them a copy of the handout. (SEE SECTION 3.)
1.1.2.5. In addition to distribution by Student Development Services, the Informational Handout will be made available by the following means:
1.1.2.5.1. Posting on the college cyber course page.
1.1.2.5.2 Distribution at all registration sites both on and off campus.
1.1.2.5.3 Publication in the class schedule each semester.
1.1.2.5.4 Distribution by Faculty advisors to students wishing to register for cyber courses.
1.1.3. Student Support
1.1.3.1. To facilitate student access to college support services such as the counseling office, the financial aid office, the registrar and faculty advisor, links to office numbers and personnel are provided on the college web site.
1.1.3.2. Students may purchase textbooks online from the college bookstore and have them delivered via postal service or a commercial delivery service.
1.1.3.3. The college will make space available on a server for students to create home pages and post course assignments.
1.1.3.4. The college will provide email accounts for students.
1.2. ADMINISTRATION OF CYBER COURSES
1.2.1. The Division Chairs will be responsible for Cyber courses. They will cooperate in the development, scheduling, staffing & evaluation of these courses. When necessary, they will also coordinate technical details with others, such as the Webmaster and Network Administrators.
1.2.2. The tuition for out of state Cyber students is the same as that for any other out of state students, and is governed by VCCS, rather than local policy.
1.3. CYBER COURSE OFFERINGS
1.3.1. The college has the following goals in offering cyber courses:
1.3.1.1. To reach students who might not otherwise come to a campus because of distance or time constraints.
1.3.1.2. To reach students who may prefer electronic instruction.
1.3.1.3. To improve faculty productivity by making it possible to collapse low enrollment(cyber) classes.
1.3.1.4. To increase the selection of courses by allowing the college to offer low enrollment classes that might be collapsed.
1.3.1.5. To make it possible for students to complete degrees on-line in program areas in which it is educationally sound and technically possible to do so.
1.3.2. Course offerings will be determined by Division Chairs in consultation with faculty. Where competition exists among faculty offering cyber courses, the final decisions will rest with the Division Chairs.
1.3.3. In order not to force students to take cyber courses, during any given academic year, most core courses will be offered by traditional means.
1.3.4. Unless they are knowledgeable and mature, first-semester freshmen should not be advised to take cyber courses.
1.3.5. Generally, faculty should not be asked to teach by Internet if they are unwilling or untrained to do so.
1.4. STANDARDS FOR CYBER COURSES
1.4.1. Faculty must be sufficiently knowledgeable about the technology they will use.
1.4.2. "The content of distance courses offered by the college is determined by the faculty and is described by the course outline approved and housed in the office of the appropriate division chair. The content of courses offered at off-campus sites or by alternative delivery formats such as compressed video or the Internet is consistent with the content of the same course offered on-campus in a traditional format. All courses are approved and appear within the Virginia Community College System State Curriculum Guide." (SVCC SACS Substantive Change Notification April 1,1998).
1.4.3. Cyber courses should be at least as rigorous as on-campus courses. Indicators of their academic integrity include the following:
1.4.3.1. Faculty employed to teach cyber courses should meet the same standards as faculty teaching other courses. "Southside Virginia Community College’s division chairs and directors evaluate the credentials of all full- and part-time faculty and ensure that those credentials satisfy the SACS and VCCS-29 criteria for faculty teaching transfer, occupational-technical, and remedial courses. The credentials of faculty who will teach distance courses are evaluated in the same manner as are the credentials of other faculty." (SVCC SACS Substantive Change Notification April 1,1998)
1.2.3.2. Cyber courses must adhere to the cyber course design guidelines specified in section 2.1.
1.2.3.3. Cyber courses are subject to periodic studies by Institutional Research (e.g. pass-rates, grade distributions).
1.4.3.4. Cyber courses are a part of the college’s Assessment program.
1.4.3.5. Cyber courses and faculty are a part of the college’s annual formal evaluation process. SVCC has also adopted the SACS Suggestion that "...courses delivered via a distance learning mode be evaluated with instruments containing items specifically related to the effectiveness of that instructional delivery mode." (SACS Report of Substantive Change July 12-15,1998)
1.4.3.6. The design and content of cyber courses must be approved by the appropriate Division Chair.
1.4.3.7. The Division Chair should "observe" courses in progress, much as he or she would a traditional class.
1.4.3.8. Each instructor should develop a policy to address matters of academic security/integrity of cyber courses. Means should be implemented to assure that the students registered in cyber courses are in fact the persons who have done the work which is submitted under their names. The policy should also specify conditions under which tests and examinations may be taken.
1.4.3.9. The college believes the faculty should adopt the SACS Suggestion that "...sufficient work, including tests upon which a course grade is based, occur in a proctored environment to ensure the integrity of course grading and the determination of levels of achievement." (SACS Report of Substantive Change July 12-15,1998)
1.4.3.10. SVCC also subscribes to the "VCCS Statement on Academic Standards for Distance Education Courses."
1.5. EVALUATION OF CYBER COURSES
1.5.1. The college will develop or acquire student evaluation instruments appropriate for cyber courses. Among other things, the instruments should evaluate the course assignments, the extent and effectiveness of interaction between student and teacher and among students, the mode and effectiveness of teacher feedback on assignments, course work load, grading, course support materials, and the relative ease or difficulty of communicating and carrying on course work with the procedures and software used in the course.
1.5.2. In addition to student evaluations of their courses, the college should implement Institutional Research on cyber courses by collecting data on grades awarded, rates of attrition, student satisfaction, impact on regular course offering, costs, and other relevant factors. To facilitate data collection, the college should create on-line evaluation forms.
1.6. TECHNICAL SUPPORT OF CYBER COURSES
1.6.1. The college is responsible for providing and maintaining an infrastructure of lab and office computers, servers, networks, Internet connections, and application software necessary to offer cyber courses.
1.6.2. The college is responsible for hiring technical support personnel to assist faculty with hardware and software problems encountered in offering cyber courses and to assist students in becoming oriented to the computer labs. This includes making lab assistants available during regularly scheduled lab hours and having extra help available during the first two weeks of the semester when new students are being introduced to the technology.
1.6.3. Decisions regarding selection, purchase, and installation of course authoring software and special application software for cyber courses should be made jointly by faculty, Division Chairs, and the Network Administrators. The TLTR is the appropriate venue for these discussions.
1.7. SUPPORT FOR FACULTY TEACHING CYBER COURSES
1.7.1. The College will continue to use the current pilot policy regarding Internet faculty loads, with the addition of some clarifying comments:
1.7.2. Enrollments for cyber courses which exceed the expected average may be pro-rated for additional work load credit. Before awarding additional credit, the instructor’s entire course-load shall be considered. The awarding of this credit should be consistent across the college.
1.7.2.1. The average enrollment in writing classes is 22 students.
1.7.2.2. For non-writing courses the average enrollment is 30 students.
2. RESPONSIBILITIES OF FACULTY TEACHING CYBER COURSES
2.1. COURSE DESIGN
2.1.1. Faculty who offer cyber courses should attempt to do more than to simply deliver traditional course materials via an electronic medium; rather, they should strive to utilize the possibilities for new course designs and learning experiences offered by computer technology and the Internet.
2.1.2. Faculty may determine the technical requirements for their cyber courses. However, they should be mindful that most students do not have state of the art computers or the latest versions of essential software. Emerging, cutting-edge, technology should be used only when necessary, and when it is necessary, it should be made clear to the students prior to registration.
2.1.3. As much student-to-student and student-to-faculty interaction should be incorporated as possible. Course strategies should promote significant interaction and foster a sense of community by using email, discussion forums, chat rooms, and by including group projects.
2.1.4. The use of electronic resources should be encouraged. When appropriate, links should be provided to the college library.
2.1.5. Faculty should follow good navigational practices to make it easy for students to move around a course site.
2.1.6. Faculty should be hesitant about asking students to subscribe to Internet services such as email or chat rooms which request personal information. However, if the instructor deems the use of such a service essential to a course, then students should be advised before hand and told that they are not obligated to reveal personal data.
2.1.7. Faculty offering cyber courses should provide a web site for their courses, not just a course outline and syllabus. A typical web site would include:
2.1.7.1 Administrative policies governing the course (e.g. how often students need to communicate with the instructor)
2.1.7.2. Any warning, advice, encouragement about the special nature of the class.
2.1.7.3. Course outline(topics to be covered, number of tests & quizzes) Note this must be in place during registration for the course.
2.1.7.4. Syllabus including reading assignments, dates for tests, etc.
2.1.7.5. Bibliographic information on course textbooks along with information about how the books may be obtained.
2.1.7.6. Faculty Information (office hours, email address, phone numbers).
2.1.7.7. Links to pages displaying the College Honor Policy, the VCCS Computer Ethics Policy.
2.1.7.8. A link to the college library.
2.1.7.9. Any academic prerequisites.
2.1.7.10. Support materials such as detailed directions for completing course assignments and projects, models of successfully completed assignments, "lecture" notes, practice tests, study questions, tips, hyperlinks to demonstrations, examples and research materials.
2.1.7.11. Faculty should not place items (e.g. hit counters) on their pages that carry commercial endorsements.
2.2. ADVERTISEMENT OF CYBER COURSES
2.2.1. The Process
2.2.1.1 Faculty offering cyber courses should give scheduling information and course descriptions to the Division Chairs for approval.
2.2.1.2 When cyber courses have been approved, Division Chairs will forward the information to the college public relations office for inclusion in the college schedule.
2.2.1.3 The information will also be forwarded to the Webmaster who will post the courses on the college server and register them with search engines and Internet services which specialize in indexing cyber courses.
2.2.2. Faculty should post a course outline and a syllabus for each cyber course before the registration period so that students may appraise the course content, work requirements and other aspects of the course before committing themselves to it. This is in keeping with the SACS Suggestion that "...course schedules and on-line registration information contain sufficiently detailed information about distance learning courses to facilitate informed student decisions about course registration" (SACS Report of the Substantive Change).
2.3. FACULTY SUPPORT OF STUDENTS
2.3.1. Faculty should maintain communication with students in cyber courses through all practical means including email, chat rooms, discussion forums, telephone conversations and periodic face-to-face meeting in office conferences or in scheduled group meetings.
2.3.2. All full-time faculty, including those who teach one or more cyber courses, should hold office hours on campus for a minimum of ten hours a week.
2.3.3. Faculty should respond to student email in a timely manner.
2.3.4. Faculty should grade and give feedback to student work in a timely manner.
2.4. SUPERVISION OF CYBER COURSES
2.4.1. Interconnectedness is a defining characteristic of the web. Therefore pages for college courses which contain links to web sites will unavoidably associate course materials with commercial materials. However, no commercial materials should be included on pages which are hosted by college servers.
2.4.2. Faculty who receive student work in electronic form should archive this work in the event that a grade is contested.
2.4.3. Faculty are responsible for insuring that copyright permission has been obtained for all materials posted on web pages of their creation.
2.4.4. Faculty are responsible for monitoring written or graphic material posted in a public place such as a discussion forum or a web page when this venue is created and administered by the faculty and utilized by students as a working component of a course. If objectionable material is found, faculty should remove such material and if the person responsible is known, he/she should be reported to the administration.
2.4.5. If objectionable material which is explicitly associated with course work is posted in a public place beyond the physical control of faculty, such as a student web site on a commercial server, faculty cannot be held responsible, but may impose administrative sanctions on the student including immediate withdrawal from the course with a failing grade.
2.4.6. Faculty are responsible for ordering textbooks for cyber courses at the same time that they order textbooks for on-campus courses. The textbook orders should be given to Division Chairs who should then forward them to the bookstore.
2.4.7. To protect privacy and course materials, access to Internet courses should ordinarily be restricted to those who are registered. However, course outlines, syllabi, and documents illustrative of course assignments or other activities should be accessible for perusal by perspective students.
3. RESPONSIBILITIES OF STUDENTS (The Informational Handout)
3.1. Students are responsible for obtaining email accounts in their own names so that instructors may efficiently communicate with them individually and through class email lists.
3.2. Upon registering for cyber courses, students are responsible for immediately contacting their instructors by email and giving their name, the class for which they are registered, and their email address.
3.3. Students who register for cyber courses assume the responsibility for obtaining access to the hardware and software required for communication with the instructor and for completion of course assignments.
Specifically, students must have access to a computer, an Internet connection, modern word processing software (Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect, etc), and an E-mail account.
Students who wish to use the computer labs on a college campus are responsible for obtaining a lab pass.
3.4. Students who register for cyber courses agree to adhere to the conditions stated in the course outline for submitting work and taking tests and examinations. These conditions may require students to travel to a college campus, another school, a public library, or other site to take tests and examinations under supervision.
3.5. Students who register for cyber courses are subject to the policies stated in the College Catalog and Handbook in the same way as those students who take courses on campus. This includes a strict adherence to the Honor Code.
3.6. Students who register for cyber courses are subject to the same academic calendar as those students who take courses on campus. This includes dates for the beginning and ending of classes, holidays, examination periods, and administrative deadlines for the drop-add period and for withdrawal without penalty.
3.7. Students who register for cyber courses are responsible for evaluating their proficiency in computer skills (e.g. sending email attachments and cutting and pasting between Windows applications)and deciding if they are sufficiently computer literate to succeed in cyber courses.
4. EXCEPTIONS
4.1. Any exceptions to this policy must be approved by the President.